I focus almost exclusively on PvP, whether solo, small gang, or large bloc warfare. In the past, I've been a miner, mission runner, and faction warfare jockey. I'm particularly interested in helping high-sec players get into 0.0 combat.

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

FozzieSov is due to launch on July 14, one week after the Aegis update. With it will come a complete re-working of
the way sovereignty works, focusing more on individual reinforcement actions
and (hopefully) small gang capture actions.
I’ve talked about FozzieSov here and here.
I’ve expressed the concern that null-sec won’t be worth the cost of holding it. FozzieSov is in a better
place now than it was originally, but like the fleet warp changes,
it still has its problems.

After doing a lot of listening and thinking, here are my predictions
about changes we’re going to see directly as a result of FozzieSov (and not
including other changes happening around the same time).

Prediction #1: Concurrent user
counts depend on FozzieSov’s success.

This one is a bit of a no-brainer, but Eve logged-in player counts are going
to be in a world of hurt if FozzieSov is seen as a giant mistake. A huge factor affecting this perception is
going to be how – and how quickly – CCP adjusts null-sec income and “worth”. As of now, we’ve seen absolutely nothing
about CCP’s strategies on how they intend on adjusting null-sec value to
overcome the headaches null-sec alliances are going to have to cope with. If they can respond quickly and effectively,
this can herald the beginning of a golden age for a balkanized null-sec. If it fails, they’ll destroy any interest in
null-sec and it’ll become even less occupied than it is now. The implications of this result would be
staggering and massive.

Sunday, June 28, 2015

So, clearly, nothing at all is happening with Brave. Oh, except for that whole democracy thing falling through entirely.

Mind you, I’m not trying to kick them while they’re down. Far from it.
Brave, Eve Uni, PRF, Test… these groups do good with trying to deepen
new player immersion in Eve. And that’s
a very good thing. For the longest time,
Brave, however, suffered from “The Modern Sickness”, which affects nearly
everything built in the 20th century. That sickness, of course, is the foolish
belief that democracy is the solution for everything, in all cases and
situations.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

When FozzieSov hits in a couple weeks, each null alliance could find themselves
with potentially multiple timers for each of multiple systems. We’ll have a significant amount of contesting
to do, and very quickly, we’re going to find ourselves overwhelmed with data.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that the folks who live in
the space that brought you weaponized boredom are going to quickly translate
sov contests into weaponized timer overload.
A 50-man fleet interested in seizing a constellation is best served by
spreading those 50 pilots out across all capture points with the hope that some
of them will succeed in pushing them into reinforcement.

And, more likely than not, many of them will succeed. For a small alliance owning sov, both
preventing reinforcement and contesting it will be an incredibly difficult
task, as you could have 50 capture nodes spawn from 10 successful entosis
reinforcements out of those 50. That’s a
lot of items coming out of reinforcement, all at different times.

Now, managing these timers is no problem for an alliance like Razor,
who has a very slick op timer organized by date/time with countdowns and
trackers of whether the timer is defensive or offensive. RP (a corp, not an alliance) has one for all
of our events, as well. But both rely on
out-of-game web services, which cost real dollars to maintain. And, let’s face it, to compete, alliances
NEED to have a timer board to allow line members to track what’s happening and
be online at the right times. For people
to log in and participate in your fleet, they need to know a fleet is
happening.

Sunday, June 21, 2015

Let me share something about Eve content enablers that ties into the
fleet warp changes that have me so worked up.

Science fiction is filled with the truly exceptional. Whether it’s the Mageborn in Melanie Rawn’s
series, or the original 100 in Red/Green/Blue Mars, or mutants in X-Men, or the
leroni in Darkover. Or the Starks in ASoIaF. And pretty generally, the key purpose of a
group of outstanding individuals like this is to die.

Watching Star Wars as a kid, I remember the anxiety I felt not knowing
if the Jedi were going to go extinct entirely.
I was 18 when the prequel movies came out, and it wasn’t until I was 20
or 21 that I got to see the Jedi in action in Attack of the Clones (it pains me
to even write that title, so bad…).

For, you see, the Jedi were truly skilled, capable of doing amazing
things, with the ability to shape worlds.
They were the best that universe had to offer, and they were a group you
could get behind. In AotC and Revenge of
the Sith, you got to see the Jedi in action, leading troops and accomplishing
great things. The Clone Wars cartoon
series showed more of their abilities.
It made you really like the individual Jedi, even as you lost faith that
the Jedi Order was worthy to be the defender of any society.

The details of the Clone Wars in the Star Wars universe really bothered
me for a long time. You basically had
droids and clones fighting it out – two of the most worthless groups of people
in the universe. For me, I couldn’t care
less about all the losses I saw on the screen.
Nothing unique and valuable was being lost. Droids were walking pieces of garbage, and
clones were grown from a vat for that very purpose, and had even been
genetically modified to be mentally obedient.
Death was, to me, a preferable state to a tendency towards slavish
obedience. Besides, they could always
grow more.

Friday, June 19, 2015

Over the last couple days, I’ve been tossing around the fact that in
USTZ prime time, I’ve noticed (what I believe to be) an alarmingly low number
of logged in players. Rob K challenged
me on this, so I want to defend my concerns.
So, let’s dive in.

First of all, I’m going to use USTZ numbers as my baseline, since
that’s the one that matters to me. I
don’t care if the EUTZ is strong if the USTZ consists of me flying around by
myself. If that happens, Eve becomes a
EUTZ game permanently.

I’ve spoken many times about the importance of encouraging players to pursue
in-game actions that generate a bunch of interactions with other players. Like a ping-pong ball being thrown into a
room full of mouse-traps, you want one spark to set off a cacophony of
activity. It’s awesome to see someone
actually toss a ball in, then watch as trap after trap springs in a chaotic
eruption. Eve is that room, and the
players are those mousetraps: mousetraps with a desire to be part of a big
collection of interactions (ie. something bigger) and the ability to walk out
if they’re not interested.

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Ed. Note: This post is written by Valeria Bovinus, my wife. I've edited for readability, but not content. You can find her other posts here.

The night I realized Tal had a problem was an evening like any other in
the Dex/Bovinius household. Our dear children, were snuggly nestled in their
beds after their nightly reenactment of the classic bedtime story, “Go the Fu**
to Sleep.” Tal was on his computer and I was on mine when he said, “Look I
bought a new Chimera.”

This immediately snapped me out of trying to buy clothes without a
Disney picture on it for my children and into the world of space pixels, for I’m
the wife who knows too much about Eve. Since (fortunately or unfortunately) I can
recognize ship classes from their names, this comment set off warning bells.

Me: “Why do you need another carrier?”
Talvorian: “To move my stuff to a new staging system.”

He used a lot of words to explain what ships he was keeping with him,
which were meant for low-sec, and a bunch of contingencies and situations. It was exhausting to listen to.

When I countered that he had too much stuff and that moving doesn’t
seem fun, he said, ‘”This is Eve.” But I have more fun organizing a sock drawer
than he is having now. If everyone is doing this, no wonder subscriptions are
dropping! You folks have managed to turn
space fighting into a chore. It was at
this point I realized he has a space pixel problem.

To help other players (and their wives), I’ve identified
a space hoarding grading system:

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

So, I’m pretty seriously against the new fleet warp changes. And while I don’t like them,
my friend Turamarth is a big proponent of, “Don’t just complain, offer
solutions!” So here are two solutions.

To refresh everyone, CCP said that their goal with the fleet warp
changes was to more deeply tie fleet success to the individual actions of all
the fleet’s pilots. In particular, their
goal is to limit the effectiveness of bomber fleets. Well, the proposal Fozzie shared is pretty
much guaranteed NOT to accomplish that.
And I question whether that’s even a good idea.

But for the sake of argument, let’s assume the validity of that
premise: our goal is to better entwine fleet success to the actions of
individual pilots, and that changing fleet warp is the way to do it. How should we do it to be successful?

Monday, June 15, 2015

With CCP’s announcement that they’ll be limiting the ability of FCs and
probers to warp fleets to only those destinations that fleet members could
reach themselves, I’ve been thinking a lot about why this idea frustrates me so
much. And I think I have a couple
answers to it.

Players and commentators have said CCP is trying to force players to
think for themselves more, and to take a more active role in fleet battles. The narrative expressed by these players is
that CCP is upset about “F1 fleets” and wants to engage players more in large
fleet fights.

Unfortunately, while this is a pretty theory, I have a hard time
believing this is really CCP’s goal.
This change only has the effect of limiting overall tactical options
without having any effect at all on player involvement. CCP didn’t make the change so that individual
fleet members have to actively and intentionally warp to, say, a probe scan
result. No, this change will permit no
one to warp to the probe scan result except the prober. This is a downright removal of warping fleets
on top of an enemy fleet.

(Side note: yes, this is eliminating the option entirely. The window for landing on an enemy fleet is
frustratingly narrow, and the delay it takes for a prober to warp cloaked
towards an enemy fleet, maneuver into position to allow his fleet to warp to
him, then for the FC to initiate warp is ruinous and cuts out 90% of fleet
warping opportunities. Previously, a
friendly fleet could be in warp about 12 seconds after probes hit dscan. Now, the length will be closer to 30
seconds. This is a stab to the heart of
on-grid maneuvering as well; sell your Tornados now.)

Friday, June 12, 2015

I'm currently selling one of my characters. I figured I'd dispense with being coy and just link the sale thread (I'll remove the Eve-board link when the sale is complete, to help out the new owner). However, this is really just context for the real point.

One of the rules within the Eve Character Bazaar is that you cannot "bump" your post more than once a day. Posts that have recent replies appear closer to the top than posts which do not, and by limiting every original poster (OP) to one "bump" post, the ISD team is trying to keep things fair. And that makes sense... if every character for sale posts every 10 minutes, it would be impossible for buyers to navigate the forum.

But CCP never states what, exactly, a "bump" is. When I hear "bump", I think of a post by the OP meant primarily to push the post back to the top of the heap. But what about when you receive some bids via Evemail and others in the forum thread? In my case, I posted each of the bids in different posts (they came in at different times) so they would appear in sequence to show the bid progression.

In my mind, these posts weren't bumps, since I was providing critical information to keep bidders informed about the current high bid and how many bidders were involved. I was, in effect, a proxy for the Evemail bids. Without alerting the other bidders of the bids they're competing against, I'd be wasting their time by letting them operate on old information. It was the same role as an auctioneer announcing online bids competing with in-person bidders, for instance.

Apparently, this is a big no-no, and my thread was locked. And that's fine, but the situation could have easily been avoided if the rules were clear about what constitutes a "bump". If the rule is, in fact, that the OP can only post once per day regardless of content, then they should clearly state so to save everyone's time.

Thursday, June 11, 2015

Over the past several weeks, I’ve engaged in a lot of different kinds
of fights, both solo and small gang.
Some have been successful. Some have not. Fitting lessons aside, they haven’t really
been particularly enlightening.

But yesterday, Repercussus took out a beam Confessor Fleet that
included about 8 Confessors, a Svipul, and a few other assorted ships, mostly
assault frigs. As
we were on the way back, we happened across a Sleipnir sitting on the
gate. Now, my first reaction was that
this guy was probably dual xl-ASB fit and hoping to pick off a few of us, then
let his agro timer die before jumping through the gate. I have to imagine this was in our FC’s mind as
well.

We had three logi as we started attacking this command ship. Naturally, we all had gate gun fire, as the
dirty pirates we are. But our logi was
doing a tremendous job (thanks to Tattoos for all his hard work). Though the call was made to orbit at range to
stay out of web range, I remember from experience that even with a web, a 425mm
Sleipnir has trouble attacking a fast ship orbiting tightly. 220mm guns would pose some problems, but
folks generally don’t fit 220s on battlecruisers unless they know definitively
what they’ll be fighting. And as I
pulled into my tight orbit, the dps ceased entirely.

As we applied damage and killed his drones, we noticed that he was, in
fact, dual xl-ASB fit. We knew the
window where we could begin working seriously towards damaging him would
present itself eventually, but the Sleipnir was only half-way through his ASB
charges when a Raven joined him. A quick
check told us he was from the same corp as the Sleipnir, and we changed targets
to shoot the Raven, whose tank isn’t as strong as a Sleipnir’s.

But the Raven was ASB-fit too… from the looks of it, dual-ASB, as
well. The difference in tank was
immediately noticeable: we had his armor to 10% when his ASB reload completed
and he began to rep again. Though we
were looking at another long waiting game of applying damage we knew would be
topped off again, we could finish him off the next time his charges ran out.

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

I’m no market guru, but I’ve been noticing the price of PLEX rise in
the last few weeks (currently around 900 mil).
And as a person that prefers to pay for my subscription with PLEX, that’s
annoying. CCP has obviously taken note,
as well. I don’t think it’s much of a
surprise that they put PLEX on sale at Amazon.

In fact, it seems PLEX is always on sale. And prices for PLEX have been very high for
the past several months. Coincidence?

Segue: Market speculators have very deep pockets, and are willing to
use them to keep the price of PLEX artificially inflated. When PLEX drops below a price they deem
dangerously low, they immediately begin buying up all the PLEX they can at the
lower rate to buoy it again. Over the
next few months, they sell off their stock of PLEX at the higher rate as the
market stabilizes, as a sort of unofficial cartel effect (though I don’t doubt
that some of the major players are in communication, these decisions are
largely individual). As a result, the
PLEX price dips only until they can react, at which point it recovers again.

While CCP has stated that they don’t have a target PLEX price in mind, they
do step in at various points to lower the price. They tend to run PLEX sales to narrow the gap
between the price of PLEX and the subscription price… quite frequently recently
as the price has ticked upwards. More
rarely, they’ll dip into their store of confiscated PLEX from banned accounts
and introduce it into the market (CCP doesn’t destroy this PLEX; to do so would
be to undercut faith in the value of a PLEX transaction with CCP) to boost the
supply.

While they may not want to hit a golden price target, for PLEX, it does
appear as if they DO have an affordability target. When PLEX is perceived to be too high,
players will choose to unsub instead of purchase a PLEX. And this is something CCP is not interested
in seeing. High PLEX prices may be good
for sellers, but they can crowd buyers out of playing the game. And that damages the core product: the
players who are CCP’s content.

Friday, June 5, 2015

Joining a player corporation in Eve is the best way to deepen your
engagement with the game and become a long-term player. It gives you access to a community of
players, learning opportunities, and forms of content unavailable to the solo
player. When you join a player
corporation, you gain access to another source of content.

But joining a corporation isn’t as easy as everyone makes it out to
be. Joining isn’t automatic, and usually
involves a rigorous interview and consideration process. Eve corporations aren’t like guilds in
WoW. Being part of an Eve corporation
put you in a position to do serious damage to that corporation if you choose
to, and Eve’s sandbox environment means corporations have no recourse to rogue
members. Every major corporation has had
its share of spies, awoxers, thieves, and traitors over time, and has adapted
to weed out those undesirables from the recruitment process.

For any alliance that owns assets in space or provides discounted or
free ships, fittings, or contracts, it’s better to pass on a candidate than let
in a spy. In fact, it’s better to pass
on three candidates than let one spy in.
That said, honest, genuine interest shines through.

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Well, Carnyx is live. And with
another release comes yet another slew of things we all have to relearn. This time, we need to learn all about the new
names for a bunch of old favorite modules, and try to figure out why a mobile
depot is attacking me.

After a while, the novelty of new patches starts to become outweighed
by the work it takes to just play the game.
New module names and stats means I need to check all my fittings and
adjust them accordingly.

For instance, it took me a moment to reorient myself to the 5mn, 50mn,
and 500mn MWD name changes, which really make a lot of sense. But I always flew with meta-4 MWDs, so now I
have to go back and change all of my MWD-fit ships to T2. That’s a hauling job, albeit an easy one, as
well as a close review of each fitting to see if I have enough grid and CPU to
fit them. Yet another tweak that can
render an individual fit worthless and, unless I catch it in the first pass
(which is never 100%), can result in me being unable to use that ship on a
given night.

I largely fly with T2 modules; the exceptions are the usual ones:
neuts, energy vampires, scrams, tracking disruptors, sensor dampeners, and
jammers, all of which provide better overheating with equal stats to T2. And none of those have been touched yet. Yes, I’m aware I’m going to likely be having
a rough summer as those categories come around.

Monday, June 1, 2015

Few things in life are as difficult as admitting that you made a
mistake. Sure, admitting that you made
one mistake isn’t so bad. You apologize
and move on. But what about when you
were doing something without realizing it over a period of weeks or months, that
slighted a friend and ally? That’s a lot
harder.

There’s a pilot in my corporation who has a PvP record I admire. He can cite all of the match-ups and
counter-strategies a person should use against every possible scenario. He can fly well in almost any situation, and
he collects a large number of kills as a result. I’ve heard of a lot of good PvPers, but
translating “good PvP” into specific thought processes, actions, and fitting
decisions… that’s harder. This player
was pretty much an archetype of a “good PvPer” for all these reasons. He claims “Eve isn’t that hard”, but while
flying well is a matter of practicing knowable, good habits and applying them
situationally, doing so in real combat situations is incredibly difficult. It’s because it’s so hard that I consider him
to be so capable.

But, in studying at how he does what he does to gain those skills
myself, I was trying to explain why he was so good. And my final conclusion came down to, “He
plays all the time; of course he has so many kills.”

That, my friends, is a bad conclusion.
It offers an easy – and incorrect – excuse that I was using to be
lazy. It gives me an “out”: I can’t play
more than a couple hours a day, so naturally I can’t hit those same heights.

But more than that, it insults him, by claiming that his achievements
are the result of nothing more than stubbornness and “being there”. It completely overlooks the good habits, skills,
and knowledge that lead to success. And
that’s a huge disservice to him. And I
didn’t even see that I was doing that.

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